A Woman’s Innocence

by Gayle Callen

  She licked her lips, not quite able to meet his eyes.

  “You must wish I wouldn’t have told you about my past,” he said.

  “No! Never think that. I just don’t want you to have another thing to feel guilty over.”

  Some of the tension left him. “I promise he’ll talk quite easily. I won’t deny that it’s hard to hold myself back. I could make him talk immediately, but…” His voice faded off, and his look was far away. “I don’t want to have to do that.”

  Wasn’t that why she was worried? Would he feel no remorse having to torture the man, and perhaps take his life? And then he’d think his soul was beyond hope.

  She couldn’t let that happen.

  Hours later, Sam eventually arrived in the servants’ hall for supper, settling in to talk to Frances, and Julia was able to leave easily. He let her go with a wave, because now that their assailant was captured, he had less reason to fear for her.

  As she climbed the stairs, she felt distant, even numb. But not uncertain, never that. They had some evidence now, and with Lewis coming, and even Colonel Whittington’s help, she could hope to be exonerated.

  The door to the sitting room was locked, but she had the key to her own bedroom. She heard the man’s muffled sounds as she walked to the sitting room and stepped inside.

  His red face quickly turned to face her. Again, he tried to speak, but his words were garbled behind the rag. He was tugging frantically on the ropes now, and she could see blood at his wrists. He’d been bound for over eight hours, and there was a desperation in his movements and a wild look in his eyes.

  When she stepped closer, he stilled, glancing repeatedly behind her as if he expected to see Sam. She gave him a cold stare and went past him into Sam’s room, emerging with a long-handled knife.

  He watched her warily.

  “I’m not like other women,” she said softly, menacingly. “You know how I lived my life in the East, how I traveled through jungles and over mountains. I was given this knife during a tiger hunt by the Maharajah of Benares. And I’m an expert with it.”

  She lunged at him with the knife, and then buried it into the wooden chair between his thighs. He gave a hoarse cry and tried to rear back.

  “Now listen to me carefully,” she said. “I’m letting you go.”

  He blinked at her, and she could practically see the workings of his twisted mind. He would agree to whatever she said, lie to her face, then break his word to try to kill her. He was, after all, a murderer.

  But she had another plan, one that wouldn’t make her into a cold-blooded murderer like he was.

  “There are conditions,” Julia said. “You are to leave Hopewell Manor immediately. You will speak with no one. I make no guarantees where Sam is concerned. He wants to kill you.” She had no qualms about lying. “You also have my brother to worry about. I’ll make sure he knows that you wanted his money more than you wanted to serve him.”

  She undid his gag and pulled it away. “Do we understand each other?”

  The gag had stuck to the corners of his mouth, and she watched him try to moisten the parched skin.

  “The general won’t believe you,” he said hoarsely.

  “Won’t he? It will be very easy for me to make sure a sum of money is missing.” Well, it would be if she knew how to get at the money. “Are you saying that you don’t want your freedom?”

  He was squirming now, staring at the door. “How do I know this isn’t a trap, that your lover isn’t waiting outside the door to kill me?”

  “If he wanted to kill you immediately, you’d already be dead.” She lifted the pistol out of her pocket and looked at it thoughtfully. “I suggest you get as far away from here as you can. My brother was careless, and he’s left enough evidence to incriminate himself. We already have the government on the way.” So, these were a few half-truths. “Do we have an agreement?”

  He was wriggling frantically now.

  “I assume you need to use the chamber pot?” she asked.

  He groaned. “Why are you doing this?”

  “I have reasons you don’t need to know. Do we have a bargain?”

  He finally nodded, and she sliced the rope binding his hands and stepped away. He frantically tugged at the ropes on his ankles, while she trained the pistol on him.

  When he stood up, she smiled. “There’s a chamber pot in Sam’s room. Allow me to escort you.”

  She didn’t leave him for a minute. Afterward, she kept the pistol aimed at him as she followed him through the house, quiet now as the evening wound down. They avoided the servants’ wing. He walked stiffly, obviously still sore from the bindings. He appeared somehow meeker, as if he thought she’d really rescued him from a bad end. This made her even more wary. She waited for her chance. She followed him to the stables, where, hiding the gun, she sent the tired groom to his bed and let the stranger saddle a horse.

  Then they looked at each other. He suddenly lunged at her, but she was prepared. She shot him, and he fell backward, blood streaming from his upper arm. He groaned and rolled side to side, and she stood over him. He’d fallen right into her trap.

  “My aim was true,” she said softly, her pistol pointed at him. “I could have killed you, but I didn’t. Leave here now. I’ll be waiting if you return.”

  He managed to mount the horse, cradling his arm, which hung uselessly from his shoulder. With a snarled curse, he rode away into the darkness.

  Chapter 24

  Sam was feeling rather relaxed, knowing that his enemy was confined and no longer creeping about the manor. When Julia left for a moment of privacy, he felt confident she’d be fine, and it didn’t even occur to him that she hadn’t returned until Frances pointedly yawned an hour later. He wished his sister good night, and as he walked up through the dark house, he thought about Lewis’s henchman, and what would need to be done.

  Truly, he didn’t imagine the man would be able to take much pain. Julia was worried about nothing. But if it took more effort, she would just have to realize that the man was her enemy, that certain things needed to be done for good to triumph.

  The door to the sitting room was unlocked, and this gave Sam pause. He hadn’t thought Julia would want to see their assailant again until they’d gotten all the information they could out of him.

  He swung open the door and came to a complete stop. The chair was empty, the ropes scattered on the floor.

  Where was Julia?

  He already had his pistol in hand, and he kept a wary eye on Julia’s open bedroom door, while he approached his own. His room was empty. Still hearing nothing, he crossed the sitting room, led with his pistol, and entered Julia’s room. Nothing. He forced every bit of panic from his mind. He was just heading out into the corridor when he practically ran over Julia. She smiled at him warily as he caught her arms and steadied them both.

  “Thank God,” he murmured, pulling her inside the room for a quick hug. “He’s gone, and I thought he’d taken you.” He couldn’t quite seem to catch his breath, and he filled himself with the beautiful sight of her.

  She had a strange look on her face, as if she were uncomfortable as well as wary. Then she inhaled a deep breath that ended on a sigh. “I know he’s gone.”

  “Were you following him?”

  “No. I let him go.”

  Sam stared at her, not sure he’d even understood her words. “What did you say?”

  “I let him go. I even shot him in the arm when he came after me again.”

  He was so stunned that he barely noticed the anger in his voice. “You let our only witness go? What the hell did you do that for?”

  She raised her chin in the air, though she trembled with emotion. “I won’t let you have any more nightmares of the things you wish you didn’t have to do.”

  “You’re saying you did this for me?”

  Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “You hated yourself for some of the things you’d had to do in life. I didn’t want you to feel that way becaus
e of me.”

  He was stunned to realize that she had risked her own life, maybe even given up her freedom, all to protect him. He was overwhelmed at her sacrifice, unable to imagine what he had done to inspire such a gesture from her.

  But in the end, it was his dark side that she had feared would emerge. He feared it, too. He turned his back on her and paced to the window.

  “Sam,” she said pleadingly, “don’t you see that you have to come to terms with what you had to do to survive? It doesn’t make you a horrible person.”

  He tried to ignore her words. “All we have now is the hope that Lewis will come,” he said coldly.

  “He will. He won’t risk losing the one reward he had for treason.”

  Sam turned to stare at her white face and softly said, “Let’s hope you’re right. Because if he doesn’t, we might have to resign ourselves to leaving England and our pasts behind.”

  That night, Sam insisted that the footmen keep patrolling and that he and Julia barricade themselves into the room. He claimed Lewis’s henchman was even more dangerous now that he’d been shot. But Julia was confident that she’d dealt him a wound that rendered him useless, at least for a couple days. But she didn’t bother Sam with her opinions.

  The next afternoon Lewis Reed’s arrival was heralded by his groom, who came ahead to alert the household. Julia, just sitting down to luncheon, closed her eyes with relief. She felt nervous, shaky, and so full of hope. She exchanged a meaningful gaze with Sam, while the staff erupted around them. Mrs. Bonham and the kitchen maid went running to prepare a meal for the general, as Lucy and Florence were sent up to ready his suite. Julia quietly followed Sam, who was catching up with his sister in the corridor.

  Sam caught Frances’s elbow and leaned near her ear. “Don’t mention us if you can help it.”

  “Did you know he was coming?” Frances demanded.

  He nodded. “We’ll keep out of the way. If he demands to see us, say we went into the village for the day.”

  Julia thought Sam’s eyes were full of secrets as he looked at her. Had he forgiven her? She’d gone to bed alone last night. She had thought she was helping him, but his furious silence had been a shock to her. None of it mattered as long as he was safe, and able to heal instead of adding another sin to whatever mental list he kept. In the face of his anger, she had wanted to shout out her love for him, to prove that he was worth any sacrifice to her.

  But she’d been afraid of his pity.

  Julia and Sam spent the rest of the day in their suite, receiving occasional reports from Lucy on Lewis’s whereabouts. Lewis had asked to see the constables investigating his sister, and when Frances told him that they were in the village, he’d insisted on seeing them when they returned. Sam said he would go to Lewis alone.

  Julia found herself too nervous to read as the evening approached. She could only pace and think about how close they were to proving the truth. She was still so angry at everything her brother had done to her, but she was also full of pity and sadness at what he’d allowed his life to become. What if he recognized Sam? Would her brother try to kill him?

  But Sam seemed unconcerned, poring over their notes, distant and polite. She wanted the old Sam back, the one who understood her every thought, who treated her with gentleness and love, even though he would never say the words.

  Lewis spent much of the day alone in his bedroom, but for dinner taken in the dining room with the silent company of his footmen. Lucy claimed he seemed distracted, and hadn’t asked any questions at all about the household.

  In the evening, Sam went down to meet Lewis in the study, and Julia sat with her back against their sitting room door, listening for any sound in the quiet house. She kept expecting raised voices, shouts, even a gunshot. But there was nothing. When she heard footsteps in the hall and Sam’s low voice at the door, she let him inside and hugged him.

  He hugged her back. “You’re trembling,” he murmured into her hair.

  “What did you expect? I thought you might try to kill each other.”

  Sam shook his head in bemusement. “It was the strangest interview. He seemed very distant and troubled. He didn’t recognize me at all, barely looked at me, in fact.”

  “I’m not surprised. That beard really disguises you. You’re very good at what you do.”

  He grinned wickedly.

  She held up a hand. “None of that, now.”

  “Oh, all right.” He nodded and sat down in a chair. “I think he was worried that I, as a constable, might recognize his guilt. He seemed to only want assurances that I had discovered nothing new about you, and that you hadn’t turned up to cause trouble.”

  “And that was it?” she said in amazement.

  “That was it. He was already thinking about the night ahead, and what he had to do.”

  “Oh, Sam, I’m almost afraid to see him.”

  “Don’t be. It’s almost over.”

  After Lewis had retired for the night, Julia and Sam stationed themselves in a guest room across the hall from the master suite. She found herself pacing again, but Sam sat beside the door, which he’d opened a crack so he could peer into the hall. He never moved, he never spoke, and she knew it was because he didn’t want to alert Lewis. But she desperately wanted Sam to hold her, to tell her that everything would be all right.

  After midnight, Lewis emerged from his room carrying a shuttered lantern. Sam followed him at a discreet distance, and Julia followed Sam. Lewis made every attempt to be quiet, as if he thought one of the household servants might be the blackmailer. He trod lightly down the stairs and out the front door.

  The wind had picked up through the evening, and she smelled moisture in the air. Shivering, she followed both men down the darkened paths deeper into the garden. She was glad to have Sam to follow, because she didn’t think she could look at her brother without feeling sick. He was her last relative, and he’d betrayed her for money.

  She kept her senses alert for Lewis’s henchman, just in case he knew his master had come and might need him. But after the way she’d incapacitated him, and the fact that he’d failed to kill her, she assumed that he wouldn’t want to face Lewis’s reprisals.

  Lewis hardly needed the lantern to guide him. He knew these grounds as well as she did. He led them straight to the statue of Venus. As she and Sam had arranged beforehand, they separated and circled to different sides of the statue. Lewis opened the shutters on his lantern and set it on the statue’s base.

  Clutching the pistol in her pocket, Julia stared at the anxious face of her only brother. His skin was puffy, lined with age in a way she hadn’t noticed just months ago. His sandy blond hair looked faded and unkempt, as if he spent a lot of time running his hands through it. She told herself to feel relieved that they’d been right about him all along—instead she was sick with worry.

  Lewis ran his fingers in a pattern over one edge of the base, then pulled open a door. Julia held her breath, waiting to see if their assailant had returned, but she heard nothing.

  Sam stepped into the small circle of light, his pistol in his hand. “Hello, Lewis.”

  Her brother gasped and moved his hand toward his pocket, but Sam quickly said, “Don’t. After all you’ve done, you know I won’t hesitate to kill you.”

  Julia moved out from behind the bushes, and Lewis turned his head and saw her. He looked puzzled for a moment. As he recognized her, his expression registered shock and disbelief. They stared at each other with a lifetime of incomprehensibility. Then she pulled out her own pistol, and his shoulders sagged.

  “You’re the constables,” he mumbled.

  “Julia,” Sam said calmly, “please remove his weapon from his pocket.”

  She didn’t want to touch him, but she trusted Sam’s aim more than she did her own. She left her pistol on the ground so her brother couldn’t reach it, and approached him briskly, trying not to show the effort it took to hold her tears back. Lewis remained still as she patted his pockets and removed a sin
gle pistol. She stepped away quickly.

  “Lewis, sit down on the path,” Sam said, gesturing with his pistol.

  Lewis waded through the ferns and rose vines and sat down heavily, his hands resting in his lap. Julia once again aimed her pistol at him, while Sam held the lantern near the statue’s base.

  “Is it there?” she asked, her stomach taut with nerves and suppressed hope.

  Sam reached inside, and she watched him drag a portmanteau to the edge of the compartment. He opened it and stared inside, then looked at her.

  “There’s money here—a lot of it. Gold, too.”

  She heaved a sigh and started to tremble with relief. But she reminded herself that it wasn’t over yet. She kept the pistol trained on her brother. She was waiting for his belligerence, his protestations of innocence, but he looked exhausted.

  “I didn’t mean it to be like this,” Lewis said brokenly.

  If he expected her pity and compassion, he wasn’t going to get it. “You didn’t want me executed, Lewis?” she said with sarcasm. “You didn’t think implicating me in treason might bring about this result?”

  Still not looking at her, he said, “I never thought it would be this difficult. I thought—I thought I would be able to live with myself, because of the way you’d disgraced me.”

  “I disgraced you?”

  He went on as if he hadn’t heard her, as if now that he’d started, he couldn’t stop. “I didn’t know about your behavior at first. I just…used your letters. It was harmless—I didn’t think you’d ever even know what I’d done. I only told the Russians our troop strength, something they could have figured out on their own in time. I was going to save Hopewell Manor. That was all I ever wanted. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

  He looked up at her plaintively, as if his good intentions should negate his methods and the result. She pressed her lips together to keep from interrupting him.

  “And then I was told Lieutenant Lawton became your lover. I was…appalled by your wanton behavior. You’d always been a creature to tolerate, because I had no choice. But that was—that was too much.”